The one thing I do know it does is set a bad guy ablaze. I tried to shovel a guy in the back and I hit the wrong button and it lit him up like a christmas tree. Good times.

Just wait until you get your first kill with the Flare Gun. Haha.

That is a really useful property of the flare gun which I use a ton. Not only can you spot enemies in choke points , you can also get area denial and an indicator if someone passes the flare. Probably why not set the guy who escaped behind cover with 20 health on fire? The utility of the flare gun is exceptional, especially given the relative scarcity of spotting in the game.

The only downside is the tendency to set yourself on fire and (sometimes) the aoe of the fire-effect , which is bigger than you expect. This often cuts of your path in the same way it cuts off the enemies' when used for area denial.

I have to agree with flare gun (spot) being a very useful gadget. The spotting alone helps you to asses the situation (like motion sensor balls in BF4), grants you bit points and works as a area of denial in doorways and such. At the very least being on fire distracts enemies and notifies you somebody crossed the flare.

yup, flares i'd say are probably the best gadget for the scout class hands down, yes, even better than binoculars and k bullets(although k bullets are a must if you use the pedersen device, btw protip: if you need to swithch to k bullets fast with that one, change to your secondary and then directly for the k-bullets, this will skip the convertion process animation, it works only when the k bullets are "in the chamber" though(if you fire and then do it, you will still have to reload)
one thing i want to know about though is: the flash flare, how does it work? i remember in the beta it was quite the flash, basically a sun on the ground, but it doesn't seem to be the case in the release version, however i tried it only in outdoor environments, does it have enironment multipliers to the flash effect?

p.s.: unrelated, but i'd like a weapon like the m320fb, so i was looking at the flare guns and the grenade launchers variants, what are the amount of damage they do to people with direct hits? (i unfortunately already know smoke grenades do approximately 0 damage)

p.s.: unrelated, but i'd like a weapon like the m320fb, so i was looking at the flare guns and the grenade launchers variants, what are the amount of damage they do to people with direct hits? (i unfortunately already know smoke grenades do approximately 0 damage)

I have been using the Flare Gun a lot, and each directly lit enemy soldier is inflicted about 20 damage consistently.